The work to advance equity in Southern education for all students is being led by you – advocates, organizers, activists, researchers; parents, students, teachers, and community members in communities and states across the region. The Southern Education Foundation (SEF) is offering this site as a resource to help connect, share, and learn from each other in the fight for education justice. We are stronger together – join us! To learn more about SEF visit our website.

Register today to start connecting and sharing with the community in our fight for education justice.

While this is a tool crafted especially for Southern advocates of public education, we welcome advocates from across the country to join us.

Just as the South has been the site of great racial and economic injustice throughout our history, it is also the home of courageous people and impactful movement moments in our country’s struggle for civil and human rights for all.

Where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955.

Where the Little Rock Nine stood strong to integrate Central High School in Arkansas in 1957.

Where students demonstrated at Woolworth’s in Greensboro, North Carolina over segregation in 1960, triggering sit-ins throughout the South.

Today, the fight for social justice continues in the South and the nation, particularly for people of color, low income people, LGBTQ people, immigrants, and women. While this fight continues across the country, place matters in how this movement is shaped in the South.

Building movements across race and generation carries a particular power.

The growing immigrant population and the increasingly young demographic give both urgency and rising strength to education justice work.

Place matters within the South, and the South’s varied regions must be connected – from Appalachia, to the Delta, to the Deep South and the Southwest.

Faith communities play an important and historical role in social justice movements in the South.

“As the south goes, so goes the nation”

— W.E.B. DuBois —

Impacting indicators of opportunity and progress for the South’s students is important not just to create a thriving South, but to impact national indicators, too.

The South is the first region of the country with a majority of low income students and students of color in public schools. Our public schools should be well resourced to meet the needs of the students they serve.

The rising movement to address structural racial, economic, and social inequity in the region through education justice is building power, bringing victories, and growing a vision for well resourced, supportive, diverse schools across the region and the country.

We are stronger together – join us!

Watch highlights of advocates and organizers from 11 Southern states gathering to share strategies and tactics.